It's been ages since I mentioned what I've been buying lately, so here's the swag I brought back from Sydney (not much, really):

• Melt Banana's Cactuses Come In Flocks, because I had to start somewhere, and it was about the only thing I could find to buy at Red Eye this time around.

• Johnny Cash's Orange Blossom Special. I guess I just needed some comforting boom-chugga-boom sounds while I was away from home.

• Wilco's A.M. for $10!

• The Go-Betweens' Tallulah for $10, to replace my scratched copy (it'd been a while since I heard the lazy guitar of Spirit of a Vampyre, too).

• Can's Tago Mago. Yet another starting point.

...and from this weekend :

• Big Black's Songs about fucking, because it was cheap, and I didn't have it yet (if only I could remember what happened to my copy of Our Band Could Be Your Life, so I could lend it to the next person who really oughta read about all those bands).

• William S. Burroughs' The Elvis of Letters, for similar back-cataloguing purposes.

• Lee Hazlewood's Requiem for an almost lady and Cowboy in Sweden.

• The new Interpol album, finally.

• Where does one start with the Acid Mothers Temple, anyway? Metropolis only had the seemingly omnipresent Pataphisical Freak Out Mu!!, but I know Synaesthesia and such have a heap of others. Gah. Talk about the downward spiral.

...these (the latter 4) came from Metropolis, which seems to have changed tack since they moved into the city from St Kilda. They now sell CDs, for a start, and it's a pretty interesting collection, I must say. When I get organized enough to plug my record player back into something, I'll be heading back there to buy one of the Sun Ra albums on the wall.

Just before I went away I spied a copy of the new American Music Club album Love Songs for Patriots which is every bit as good as those overseas online music magazines promised. Come on, bring out that inner sad sack for an hour.

Also, don't forget The Church are playing the Corner this coming Friday night. Damo Suzuki is even playing there on November 25th, with support from Qua. Could be interesting. And if you've been sitting under a rock lately, you probably haven't already heard that the owners of the Corner Hotel are gunning for Northcote next year, asking punters to suggest names for the new venue. You can even, like, win stuff.

Oh yeah, I also picked up a copy of Phillip Brophy's book 100 Modern Soundtracks, which explores the sonic aspects of cinema (it makes a nice change from reading yet another person's take on why film XYZ was so goddamn wonderful).